STRACCIATELLA SOUP

To make homemade chicken soup, I usually buy a roasting chicken and cook it for dinner one night and then after a day or so (when most of the meat has been picked off clean), I use it to make the chicken broth.

Parmesan cheese (About one cup, grated. Please, use the imported. Or at least freshly grated Romano or Pecorino. The stuff you buy in a jar in the supermarket isn’t cheese. It’s more like plastic.)

Directions

Step 1To make homemade chicken soup: Drop the carcass into a large soup pot. If it’s a tall pot, cover it with about four inches of water. If it’s a wide pot, cover it with about 2 inches of water. Add a carrot, a celery stick, maybe an onion, some salt and pepper. Boil it for an hour or more. Take out the carcass and strain the liquid through a fine-mesh sieve into a large plastic container. Put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning skim off the fat. You can now use the broth as you see fit.

Step 2 Bring the broth to a slow boil. Drop in the tortellini (or short pasta of your choice) and cook until nearly done. Then drop in the frozen spinach and about 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese.

Step 3 Cook until spinach and tortellini are done and the broth is just simmering.

Step 4 Stir soup and slowly pour in the beaten egg in a continuous stream. Continue stirring until the egg is cooked.